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Drug Czar admits the drug war is a failure.

stekim

stekim

Walk with me in hell.
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AP IMPACT: US drug war has met none of its goals

MEXICO CITY – After 40 years, the United States' war on drugs has cost $1 trillion and hundreds of thousands of lives, and for what? Drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread.

Even U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske concedes the strategy hasn't worked.

"In the grand scheme, it has not been successful," Kerlikowske told The Associated Press. "Forty years later, the concern about drugs and drug problems is, if anything, magnified, intensified."
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AP IMPACT: US drug war has met none of its goals - Yahoo! News

Of course, many of us have been saying this for decades and already knew it was true, but it's nice to see the world catching up. The line from the article that sums it all up:

"Current policy is not having an effect of reducing drug use," Miron said, "but it's costing the public a fortune."
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But unfortunately, what is the solution? I mean I'm all for legalzing marijuana, but no hard core drugs, they're such a threat to the population. I mean in some ways I guess you could justify it by saying that people that wanna do it, are gonna do it anyway.

I don't know. there's no way we can legalize hard drugs, and this "war on drugs" is unsustainable.
 
I think we need to get other countries to help participate. May of these countries that have people smuggling drugs into America don't take the war on drugs seriously. They aren't holding up their end. I have mixed feelings about legalizing marijuana, but we should certainly keep hard drugs illegal (like crack and heroine). Our laws are strict enough when it comes to punishing drug abusers so I wouldn't say increasing punishments would solve the issue, in fact they should lessen the punishments and have them pay a massive fine (to maybe help offset the cost for the war on drugs). If anything we should get foreign governments to do their part in preventing smugglers from leaving their country, and we should be offering deals to drug users to give info on who dealers are so we can catch them. Hopefully little by little we will put dents in it here and there by arresting known dealers and working with foreign governments.
 
Jetboogieman said:
But unfortunately, what is the solution? I mean I'm all for legalzing marijuana, but no hard core drugs, they're such a threat to the population. I mean in some ways I guess you could justify it by saying that people that wanna do it, are gonna do it anyway.

I don't know. there's no way we can legalize hard drugs, and this "war on drugs" is unsustainable.
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If you cannot win the war you only have two choices. Keep fighting and wasting money or leave people alone.
 
Whoaah Dude, lets all go smoke a doobie and celebrate maaaaaaannn. whaaalalaaalalalalalaaaaaa.
 
Quality post:roll:
 
stekim said:
AP IMPACT: US drug war has met none of its goals - Yahoo! News

Of course, many of us have been saying this for decades and already knew it was true, but it's nice to see the world catching up. The line from the article that sums it all up:
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I guess I'm happy...admitting the truth is a start. Now if only we could get Eric Holder or Barack Obama to say something similar. And then to end this silly war on drugs. They have both been a huge disappointment on that front.
 
Jetboogieman said:
But unfortunately, what is the solution? I mean I'm all for legalzing marijuana, but no hard core drugs, they're such a threat to the population. I mean in some ways I guess you could justify it by saying that people that wanna do it, are gonna do it anyway.

I don't know. there's no way we can legalize hard drugs, and this "war on drugs" is unsustainable.
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The main reason that hardcore drugs are such a threat to the population is BECAUSE they're illegal. If they were legal, you wouldn't have the black market and all the associated violence. You could also prevent at least SOME of the deaths due to overdoses, because people wouldn't have to rely on a criminal to supply their drugs and they'd know exactly how much they were getting.
 
We will never be able to deal with our drug problem as long as we compound it with a manufactured criminal problem. It is high time we focused our resources on dealing with our drug problem divorced and unshackled from the dead weight of the criminal problem our policy of prohibition has created.

I am glad to see Kerlikowski actually admitting that prohibition "In the grand scheme, ... has not been successful" although that is a huge understatement. There is a huge discrepancy between policy, and what and where the funding is going and this current round of rhetoric.

This is kinda a quick drive by post due to limited time I am going to post a video to address jetboogiemans concerns, it is a great video, I recommend watching the whole thing.. but if 13 minutes is too much time out of your life then at least watch the last 3-3.5 minutes of it.

[nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LayaGk0TMDc"]YouTube- Law Enforcement Against Prohibition[/nomedia]

more info available via the link in my sig.
 
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Kandahar said:
I guess I'm happy...admitting the truth is a start. Now if only we could get Eric Holder or Barack Obama to say something similar. And then to end this silly war on drugs. They have both been a huge disappointment on that front.
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They might change the tone, i.e. focus on prevention and education, but they won't end the war. Baby steps. The bottom line is that you will NEVER win the war by locking people up and trying to seize all the drugs. If 40 years hasn't driven that point home what will? How much more evidence do they need? Another 40 years? They complain about crowded (and expensive) prisons, an over taxed legal system, gangs, and violence, etc. while ignoring that the War on Drugs is the root cause of most of it.
 
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digsbe said:
I think we need to get other countries to help participate. May of these countries that have people smuggling drugs into America don't take the war on drugs seriously. They aren't holding up their end. I have mixed feelings about legalizing marijuana, but we should certainly keep hard drugs illegal (like crack and heroine). Our laws are strict enough when it comes to punishing drug abusers so I wouldn't say increasing punishments would solve the issue, in fact they should lessen the punishments and have them pay a massive fine (to maybe help offset the cost for the war on drugs). If anything we should get foreign governments to do their part in preventing smugglers from leaving their country, and we should be offering deals to drug users to give info on who dealers are so we can catch them. Hopefully little by little we will put dents in it here and there by arresting known dealers and working with foreign governments.
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The blame for our drug problem lies nowhere other than right here at home. We shoved this entire prohibition scheme onto the rest of the world, and we are the largest consumers of drugs.

Foreign governments do their part and moire.. they even let us invade and poison their land, and allow us to have OUR manpower there. demand trumps their best efforts as well as ours.

A lot of what you have suggested in your post is already reality. We have been trying to put dents "little by little" for 40 years, drugs are cheaper, purer, more readily available, and more widely used than when we started.

We also have added to the original international drug treaty (The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs) and added a follow up treaty that in theory addressed the smuggling and international trade issue. demand trumps all of our efforts, so long as that remains, then the black market will never be eradicated, no matter how much international cooperation and treaties there may be

[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_Against_Illicit_Traffic_in_Narcotic_Drugs_and_Psychotropic_Substances]United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]
 
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Crunch said:
It's like they never heard of prohibition and how well that worked.
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Americans are particularly bad at learning the lessons of history. It's always like it never happened!

They banned alcohol, made the Mob incredibly powerful, then had to create a huge department to fight the Mob they made so powerful to begin with. It's the same with the War on Drugs. We ban drugs, which instantly makes them expensive. That drives people into the game because profits are so large. Those people want to protect their freedom and money, so they have to turn to violence. We then create an entire enforcement agency to fight the very people we created in the first place. Brilliant!
 
digsbe said:
I think we need to get other countries to help participate. May of these countries that have people smuggling drugs into America don't take the war on drugs seriously.
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Of maybe they know it's our problem and our fault. Further, they don't have the resources to spend billions on a war that can never be won. Sounds like they are far smarter than we are. It appears after they ram their heads against a wall a few times they realize the wall will not come down. We just keep ramming away.
 
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After we cease the war on drugs and legalize the stuff - maybe next we can finally admit that this whole "police force" thing was a mistake as well. Crime has only gotten worse and we've created a big problem in having people dependent on others for their protection. Hell, we've been trying to "fight crime" in this country for 100's of years and it's STILL here? WTF? Stupid Americans never learn the lessons of history!

If you cannot defeat crime, there are only two choices: keep wasting money on a futile civilian police force, or just let people be people.

Freedom baby! FREEDOM!

YouTube- Druggies Speak Out Against Law Enforcement
 
Taylor said:
After we cease the war on drugs and legalize the stuff - maybe next we can finally admit that this whole "police force" thing was a mistake as well. Crime has only gotten worse and we've created a big problem in having people dependent on others for their protection. Hell, we've been trying to "fight crime" in this country for 100's of years and it's STILL here? WTF? Stupid Americans never learn the lessons of history!
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They could do a far better job fighting actual crime if they stopped trying so hard to fight non-crimes. Apparently the difference between violating the rights of another and not doing so escapes your notice. You must work for the government.
 
stekim said:
Apparently the difference between violating the rights of another and not doing so escapes your notice.
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Of course not. Protecting oneself is your individual responsibility - the government has utterly failed to stop crime. It's just wasted money.
 
stekim said:
They could do a far better job fighting actual crime if they stopped trying so hard to fight non-crimes.
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Haha! What a foolish thing to say. Reminds me of the people who think we can change the strategy on drugs to be more effective.

We all know there are only two options. Keep fighting and wasting money or leave people alone.
 
Funny thing is is that in the 60's before this whole drug war and before our policing agencies started paying so much attention to chasing drug crimes, not only was the murder rate much lower.. but they also solved 90% of them.

A great graph..note the correlation between prohibition policies (1920-1933, and 1970-present) and the murder rate.

600px-Homicide_rates1900-2001.jpg


If there is a murderer in town and you catch him, the murders stop. You have a drug dealer in town and you catch him and a new one takes over (and perhaps in the process adds to the town collection of unsolved murders)
 
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marduc said:
Funny thing is is that in the 60's before this whole drug war and before our policing agencies started paying so much attention to chasing drug crimes, not only was the murder rate much lower.. but they also solved 90% of them.
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Of course. When you are busy fighting victimless crime you have less resources to fight real crime. But by all means let's keep doing what we've been doing even though the government itself admits it's not working. We'll follow Taylor's lead and throw another trillion at it. That should work. Let's ban even more stuff. That will make it work even better.

If there is a murderer in town and you catch him, the murders stop. You have a drug dealer in town and you catch him and a new one takes over (and perhaps in the process adds to the town collection of unsolved murders)
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Taylor has the solution. More of the same!
 
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